Video of Alleged Rape Posted in Florida A&M University Social Media Community
LatestOn Friday afternoon, an anonymous tipster alerted Jezebel to the presence of what appears to be a video of a rape at Florida A&M University posted to the Yik Yak-meets-Snapchat app Yeti: Campus Stories. The FAMU administration is attempting to pick up the pieces from here, but the video’s posting raises some questions about anonymous and untraceable social networks like Yeti.
The video takes place in a room that appears to be unfurnished, save for a television. A man, wearing a black t-shirt and skull cap, faces away from the camera. He then rolls over what appears to be a passed out or incapacitated woman who is naked from the bottom down and seems to rape her. Meanwhile, a voice behind the camera says, “Get right.”
Usually, Yeti posts are only available to people in the college community. However, since FAMU began trending, the video became available to anyone with the app.
Posts on Yeti don’t carry a timestamp, so it isn’t clear exactly when the footage was uploaded. However, judging by the fact that it was available Friday afternoon and that tweets discussing the post begin to appear around midnight Friday morning, it is reasonable to assume it was posted some time on Thursday evening.
“The FAMU police department IT person has researched several different ways to ascertain information from the video with negative results,” wrote FAMU’s director of public safety Terence Calloway in an email to Jezebel. “We have reached out to our students, hoping someone or anyone has some information about the video. I have also reached out to other law enforcement agencies asking for their assistance as well.”
“We are doing everything we can to get information.”
As far as we can tell, this situation is a first for Yeti, which found its success as college students migrated away from Snapchat, which was known to delete posts containing illicit content. Yeti offered an ephemeral sharing platform free of censorship.
Yeti, which requires users to be at least 17 years old, warns it contains “Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes” and “Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence.”
The app’s Terms of Service expressly forbid the posting of “nude, partially nude, or sexually suggestive photos,” but they say nothing about whether or not it is acceptable to post a video of someone committing a crime.